This book is “Doctor Zhivago” of the Middle East. It is a story of the one human being facing the turmoil of the 20th century in the region. It might not possess the Pasternak’s musicality of the language or the complexity of his love story. But it is at least as powerful in respect of historicity of the time and space; its impact on an individual.
It is told in a form of a meta-narrative. A journalist has been contracted to write a book about the famous local composer who has been murdered during the American occupation of Iraq. The text we are reading is a mixture of this book and the reflections of the journalist on the past and present of the Middle East. He visits Iraq from Lebanon and stays in the Green Mile for his investigation. His language, elegant and thoughtful without unnecessary gloss made me stop and think many times during my reading.
It was refreshing to read about the Iraq post-war from the perspective a writer from the Middle East. His observations of the clash of the cultures during the occupation and it is far from the self-evident. For example:
“That’s always some misunderstanding. The translators who are mostly graduates of English or American literature, think American soldiers and officers will have some knowledge of literature and culture. But when they discover that those Americans are illiterate in every sense, it leads to friction. The Americans, for their part, believe everyone is ignorant or illiterate, and are then shocked to find that these people know more about their own culture than they do. While the Iraqis who used to think Americans would know who Walt Whitman and John Steinbeck were, now realise they are only a bunch of ignoramuses whose knowledge is limited to porn mags and sports news. Thats how the conflict starts.”
He also very vividly depicts the mood in Iraq’s elite early at Sadam’s era:
“Amjad believed that the Arab nation had an immortal message, which was the spiritual development of the world. The statement made Kemal burst into laughter. Kamal found i mind-blogging that this talented artist could be a convinced Baathist and an extremist Iraqi, who read Nietzsche and Fichter and admired Chamberlain, especially his book The Foundations of the 19th century. Amjad also read the literature of the Baath party influenced by Gustave Le Bon’s ideas that race and nation were identical. Amjad believed that Arbs where surrounded by inferior races who were created for barbarity and savagery. Kemal wasn’t capable of making fun of these ideas because he was scared. But he realised that nationalist ideology in Baghdad gave the oppressed people a sense of false grandeur and led them to believe that Iraq stood alone and isolated…. Martyrdom therefore was a necessity.”
As far as the main narrative is concerned, the protagonist is assuming 3 very different identities during the course of his long life. He was born as a Jew, then became a Shia Muslim and lived in Iran and, later assumed the role of a Sunny Muslim in Iraq. The strongest part of this novel for me was the author’s reflections on what is identity. Early at the narrative, the young Yousef, a Jew, a talented musician, is trying to rebel against how other people define him:
”Do not put me in a tight corner, do not place me in a little box. When you treat me like a Jew, you suffocate me.” … As a Jew, Yousef was required to play the role of a Jew and wear the Jewish mask, in the same way that Muslims and Christians had to play their respective roles and wear their respective masks. Masks make it easy for individuals to live in society. Rejecting the mask made the artist an alien forever, even through music, art and beauty refused to narrow the individual into a role. Yourself was a stranger to everything around him. Everybody urged him to conform to his role. But he wished only to conform to music, for music had no religion.”
But later he surrenders: “But he had to wear a mask, because the mask made it possible for him to regain his self-confidence. It calmed his fears, expelled his demons and quelled the violent cries in the depths of his heart, the depths that told of hell.” Moreover, he goes much farther than any of us would go and physically recreates himself as another person changing the name, his wife, likely even his system of beliefs… He manages to have 3 lives instead of one...
However the author warns:
“We must not forget ourselves entirely, even if we surrender to a role we’ve invented, even when it is incompatible with our personalities, because we have chosen to play a role. But I see that others, instead of playing their roles, are played by them...We often imagine that we control the game unaware that it actually controls us. We often imagine that we uphold values contrary to those we were raised to uphold. But in truth we are only surrendering to them.”
Quotes:
Constructing identity:
“Kemal life shows that identity is always closely allied to a narrative standpoint. A life is a story that is fabricated, formalised or narrated at a completely random moment, a localised historical instant when others turn into the “other” into strangers, foreigners and even outcasts. The story of this artist shows that identity is a process of adaptation; no sooner has in located itself in one particular historical moment that it changes into a different moment. All these imaginary communities begin with a fabricated invented narrative which denies that identities blend."
Iran and Iraq preparing for the war:
"Both word and image were debased. Iraq used images to create impact by presenting the thronging crowds raising their hands mechanically and shouting. The revolution depended on the image of the masses. Iran on the other hand, turned popular phrases into poetry and vulgarity verse… There was anarchy in both countries. Each confronted the other with an artificial system that was eloquent and ridiculous. Pure chaos merged with raucous anarchy and old romantic babble. Each country went back to its heritage. Arab Baghdad went back to poetry and words, to spellbinding rhetoric that Arabs mastered. It went back to the undiminished magical power of prose, but with an additional strain of chaos and obscurantism. It was like being lulled to sleep by words without meaning."